We discovered we have a crabapple tree in the front garden. Chaos immediately ensued, resulting in this: I may have a fruit problem. Today I washed and chopped and boiled and strained all EIGHT POUNDS of those, and by the time I was done I was too tired to make jelly even if all I had to do was pour it all into a pot and boil it with sugar for fifteen minutes. And actually jar it. That was the part that seemed too hard. But the juice is an…
There’s been an unexpected benefit to having gone out and chopped my way through the nettles and brambles in search of blackberries, which is that I tromped quite a path out there and unintentionally exposed the plants to quite a lot more sunlight than they’d been getting. That, combined with a couple of weeks of unseasonably sunny, warm weather (which is due to continue for another week!) netted a startling bounty of extra berries! I got about four more cups today! I need about two more cups and I’ll have…
We have, as I may have mentioned, several apple trees in the garden. The apples aren’t really ripe yet, but a lot of them are cooking apples that aren’t going to be any good to eat straight off the tree anyway, so yesterday we had an apple picking party and the family came out to play in the garden and pick apples and eat apple pie (made, yes, from garden apples. I forgot to take a picture but it was lovely and tasty!). Hail, hail, the gang’s all here! Indy…
Woe, our guest has had to return home, but she has left us with many smiles and funny memories. The other night she cleared her plate from the table, then returned to the dining room, where she picked up a napkin and wrung it as she gazed indecisively at our plates. Ted said, in the driest and most certain tone ever, “You’re procrastinating. Go work on your thesis.” She said, “I’m NOT! I’m trying to be a good guest!” Ted said, “I’m married to a writer and you’re procrastinating. Go…
Iiiiiii have made an aaaaaaamaaaaaaazing batch of strawberry rhubarb jam. Ted, who likes zingy strawberry/rhubarb jam, thought there wasn’t enough rhubarb in mine generally, so I did half and half instead of favouring the strawberries, and it’s rrrrrrrrrrrrrreeaaaaaaaaaallllly good. I used jam sugar because I didn’t have enough regular sugar, and I thought I might have a little too much s/r for a kilo of jam sugar, which is often soft anyway. So I took what I’ve learned about unripe apples and got one and chopped it up and threw…